Yucca Mountain News Clips
Friday, August 8, 2008
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Las Vegas SUN
August 07, 2008
Sun editorial:
Yucca as growth industry
Cost, volume of proposed nuclear waste at burial site explode in latest estimates
The cost of the federal plan to bury nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain just keeps rising, as does the volume of the waste planned for shipment to the site 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
A warning about the project’s spiraling cost and need for more capacity came last month from Ward Sproat, the Energy Department’s director of nuclear waste programs.
He said then that Yucca Mountain’s “total system life cycle” cost would top $90 billion, and that the Energy Department would need to greatly enlarge the project, which has been vigorously opposed by Nevada for 20 years.
Sproat announced more precise estimates Tuesday. The cost, he said, is now pegged at $96.2 billion. The cost estimate for Yucca Mountain has been rising steadily since 2001, when $57.5 billion was projected to be its total cost.
He also said the Energy Department no longer deems Yucca’s congressionally imposed storage limit of 77,000 tons of nuclear waste to be sufficient. He said the current cost estimate assumes that Yucca will hold 122,000 tons of waste.
Those cost and storage estimates are based on little, if any, new construction of nuclear power plants, where most of the deadly waste would originate under the federal plan.
So imagine if John McCain’s call for building 45 nuclear power plants over the next 22 years comes to pass. Imagine how big Yucca Mountain would become if Congress agrees to up its storage capacity. Imagine the truckloads of waste entering Nevada, one after the other, every minute of every hour — practically forever.
There is now more reason than ever to stop Yucca Mountain, which Nevada has documented would be extremely hazardous even built to current plans. If it were to get final approval — in June the Energy Department applied to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a license to store nuclear waste — there would be no end to its expansion, and no end to the jeopardy it would pose to Southern Nevada.
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Lincoln County Record
August 07, 2008
Contentions to the DOE Caliente Rail Alignment
By Dave Maxwell
Staff Writer
The Department of Energy (DOE) is expected to make public the final Environmental Impact Statement for the 336-mile railroad corridor and alignment through Lincoln County to the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository on August 12.
Lincoln County and the City of Caliente would be greatly impacted by the proposed railroad and have stated they both want to be involved in the licensing process between the DOE and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). The DOE plans to begin the process this September and the NRC has three or four years in which to make a final ruling.
Dr. Mike Baughman of Intertech Services, a consulting firm that has had a hand in helping the County in their efforts with alternative route studies and independent environmental impact studies said, that if the DOE does go ahead with their plans, “one of the best ways for the County to get the agency to do it right is to file contentions with the Surface Transportation Board in Washington.”
Although the NRC, with a Record of Decision, may grant the DOE license, the Surface Transportation Board (STB) also has to grant a Certificate of Public of Conveyance and Necessity to operate the railroad as a shared-use line, meaning commercial rail traffic could also use the lines.
Appearing before the Joint County/City Impact Alleviation Committee in Pioche on July 8, Dr. Baughman said that expressing their concerns to the STB is “probably the most likely entity to get some of the mitigation measures parties are concerned about, imposed (by STB) as conditions for granting the Certificate.”
In the letter to the STB, dated July 7, 2008, the County stated its support of the railroad being for shared-use, “but only if impacts of the proposed rail line are fully identified and completely mitigated. In the event that the DOE is unwilling or unable to commit to the numerous mitigation measures identified within this comprehensive comment letter Lincoln County may seek to prevent construction and operation of the proposed Caliente rail alignment.”
Dr. Baughman said he learned earlier this spring that the DOE is prepared to spend between $100-300 million for mitigation costs with Lincoln County
The 36-page letter detailing the contentions, states that if the Caliente Rail Alignment is constructed, “it must be done in a manner that allows the STB and other decision makers to consider all relevant information and avoid and minimize, to the extent practicable, impacts to private land and water owners and public land users.”
In addition, the letter stated that if the railroad were to be built, “Access to public land in the vicinity of the Caliente Rail Alignment must be ensured during construction and operation of the line….STB is encouraged to require DOE to ensure that maintenance to public land is not in any way impeded by construction and operation of the Caliente Rail Alignment….To the extent the potential impacts are not fully identified and properly evaluated, however, the rail line would have profound, unmitigated impacts.”
The contentions Lincoln County has filed with the STB deal mainly with the repository itself and transportation. Dr. Baughman also said they have tried to propose measures that do not require an expert to testify. That would mean added expense to the County should they find it necessary to hire experts in a given field.
Baughman said Economic and Fiscal Consequences needed to be considered. Lincoln County is a revenue-sharing county, therefore if the rail alignment project should have an unforeseen impact on Clark County and the state of Nevada that saw revenues decline for example, “our (Lincoln County and the City of Caliente) revenues might also go down and that would effect both the government as well as the school district.”
Another point Dr. Baughman noted is the DOE has made it very clear that if they do not have rail, they don’t have a repository because they have designed a repository which is rail based.” He said DOE does not have a contingency plan to use a truck-based system if the railroad plan fails. “They haven’t done anything to design anything like that or consider it…that is a significant oversight on their part….and is an issue that can be raised during licensing….What is the alternative to not having rail? They don’t have one.”
The conclusion of the letter sent to the STB board pointed out that since the DOE is at the mercy of Congress for adequate funding to implement mitigation measures, and given that Congress traditionally under-funds requests from the Department of Energy, Lincoln County encourages the STB, “to impose conditions to its Certificate of Public Conveyance and Necessity requiring that a sufficient component of funds appropriated to this project be set aside for early planning, design and implementation of appropriate mitigation.”
Dr. Baughman said the state of Nevada will file its own set of contentions as well, with the thought of being able to kill the project. “However, the licensing process is not the place to “kill the project,” he said. “Rather the licensing process is really all about making the project safer. In addition, what we do want is to have DOE resolve or fix an issue for us…and to have them negotiate a stipulated agreement to address the concern, and the contention can then be withdrawn.”
Dr. Baughman said the letter basically identifies eight or nine topical land areas and explains how this project might impact land use and offers a number of prospective mitigation measures as conditions to granting the certificate. Some 30 allotments in Lincoln County and 12 in Nye and Esmeralda counties stand to be impacted by the DOE railroad to Yucca Mountain.
He also stated “the STB historically have been very good about imposing conditions as a stipulation to granting an application,” and has great hopes of having a favorable response to the points mentioned in the letter from the Commissioners.
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Pacific Free Press
August 07, 2008
Sell-ing Cheney's Nuclear Vision
Cheney Developing Nuclear Energy Plan
by Jason Leopold
While Dick Cheney has been talking tough about Iran's alleged nuclear activities, the vice president has been quietly pursuing nuclear ambitions of his own.
For more than two years, Cheney and a relatively unknown administration official, Deputy Energy Secretary Clay Sell, have been regularly visiting the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to ensure agency officials rewrite regulatory policies and bypass public hearings in order to streamline the licensing process for energy companies that have filed applications to build new nuclear power reactors, as well as applications for new nuclear facilities that are expected to be filed by other companies in the months ahead, longtime NRC officials said.
Before being sworn in as deputy energy secretary in March 2005, Sell, a lawyer whose roots extend to Bush's home state of Texas, was a White House lobbyist working on energy issues. He had also participated in secret meetings with Cheney's Energy Task Force.
In April, Sell and Cheney had both met with NRC officials to sign off on the final regulatory policies related to new nuclear reactors. Following the meeting, Sell had alerted a group of energy companies they could begin to take advantage of the faster application process, NRC officials said.
NRC officials said that Cheney has expressed a desire to see applications for nuclear reactor projects approved by the NRC when he and Bush leave the White House in January 2009.
The energy corporations Cheney and Sell have been personally lobbying the NRC on behalf of this year have advised the vice president and his staff on energy policy in a way that would boost their companies' profit margins. These corporations have also donated millions of dollars to President Bush's and Cheney's past presidential campaigns.
One of the cornerstones of President Bush's National Energy Policy, released in May 2001, but never wholly adopted, was "the expansion of nuclear energy in the United States as a major component of our national energy policy." Cheney said that reviving the nuclear power industry would be long-term solution to the country's increasing thirst for electricity.
At a time when public awareness surrounding renewable energy resources, the devastating effects of global warming and the importance of conservation is at an all-time high, the Bush administration has steered tens of billions in taxpayer dollars toward revamping the dormant nuclear power industry, touting it as the only proven technology to combat climate change.
Behind the scenes, Cheney and Sell have worked in tandem with the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), a powerful industry organization whose members include some of the country's largest energy corporations, to get the NRC to rewrite long-standing environmental review policies and limit oversight of new nuclear projects, thereby simplifying the application process, and significantly cutting down the time it takes to get new nuclear projects off the ground, an NRC official said.
The Nuclear Energy Institute spent $680,000 during the first half of 2007 lobbying the White House, Congress, the Department of Energy, and other federal agencies, according to a disclosure form posted online August 13 by the Senate's public records office. Cheney's longtime friend, Tom Loeffler, a former lobbyist and Republican congressman, represented the NEI. Loeffler's former aide, Nancy Dorn, worked as a Congressional liaison for Cheney, and later became a lobbyist for General Electric.
Cheney and Sell's behind-the-scenes efforts have been a boon for the nuclear energy industry - and to Westinghouse Electric, a nuclear reactor designer whose AP1000 reactor unit was certified by the Department of Energy. The company stands to earn tens of billions of dollars in profit through the sale of just a few of its nuclear reactor units. Cheney has said publicly he wants to see dozens scattered across the US.
In September, Princeton-based NRG Energy Inc., having emerged from bankruptcy proceedings, became the first company in 30 years to submit an application to build two new General Electric-designed nuclear reactors at its Bay City, Texas, nuclear power plant facility, a move that came as a direct result of several private meetings NRG lobbyists and executives held with Cheney and Sell, according to company officials. NRG's former president, David Peterson, traveled to Washington on two occasions in 2001 to help Cheney's Energy Task Force shape the country's energy policy, according to government records.
Prior to NRG's application, there had not been a filing for a new nuclear power plant in the United States since before the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor meltdown three decades ago.
NRG Chief Executive David Crane told investors recently that massive federal tax incentives and federal loan guarantees included in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 was the deciding factor in steering the company toward the $6 billion nuclear project.
* "The whole reason we started down this path was the benefits written into the [Energy Policy Act] of 2005," Crane said.
That legislation calls for upwards of $125 million in annual tax credits for a nuclear plant, in addition to loan guarantees that would cover about 80 percent of construction costs. Furthermore, the federal government provided $2 billion in risk insurance for application costs, thereby protecting energy companies in the event they would not be able to finance a nuclear project due to regulatory obstacles.
The federal loan program automatically requires taxpayers to cover any defaults on the loans. In a February report to Congress, the Government Accountability Office said failure to properly account for default risks in the loan program was one factor that "could result in substantial financial costs to the taxpayer."
A 2003 Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report said the risk of utilities defaulting on loans for new nuclear plants is "very high - well above 50 percent."
In October, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the nation's largest public power provider, also filed an application with the NRC for a license to construct and operate two new nuclear power reactors in northern Alabama using General Electric's Westinghouse AP1000 reactor units. The application was filed under the banner of NuStart Energy, LLC, a consortium of electric utilities that joined together in 2004 to test the NRC's streamlined nuclear reactor licensing program. The licensing costs were paid for by the federal government under an Energy Department program called Nuclear Power 2010 (NP2010), to promote construction of new nuclear power plants.
According to the Department of Energy's web site, NP2010 was launched in 2002, and "is a joint government/industry cost-shared effort that can help provide solutions to meet future base load energy demand and address climate change. Specifically, NP2010 seeks to: demonstrate new, untested processes for licensing reactors in the United States; identify sites for new nuclear power plants, complete first-of-a-kind engineering of new reactor designs; develop and bring to market advanced nuclear plant technologies, and evaluate the business case for building new nuclear power plants."
Sell said TVA's application was a "a monumental step toward the rebirth of nuclear power in the United States."
He also touted General Electric and Westinghouse's AP1000 reactor units as cutting edge, which subsequently helped boost the stocks of both companies. Sell said TVA's application lays the groundwork for dozens of Westinghouse AP1000 reactors to be built in the United States. General Electric had been one of the companies that advised Cheney on the National Energy Policy.
Members of the NuStart consortium include: Constellation Energy, Duke Energy, EDF International North America, the US subsidiary of the French electric utility, Entergy Nuclear, Exelon Generation, Florida Power & Light Company, Progress Energy, South Carolina Electric & Gas, Southern Company and Tennessee Valley Authority, Knoxville, Tennessee.
With the exception of Progress Energy, South Carolina Electric Gas & Light and EDF International, all of these companies participated in meetings with Cheney's Energy Task Force and advised the vice president on energy policy. Additionally, these corporations have said publicly they intend to file applications for nuclear reactor licenses before the end of 2008, the deadline to receive billions of dollars in federal subsidies and tax credits. The NRC says it expects to receive as many as 21 applications to build 32 new reactors before the end of 2008, with most, if not all, expected to go online in 2015.
Since 2005, Sell has met with the corporate executives of the consortium at least half-a-dozen times. He has relayed to top NRC officials the group's concerns over the agency's decade-old regulatory policy related to the lengthy review process of licensing nuclear power plants, and, with Cheney's backing, urged the NRC to draft new rules that calls for granting a combined construction and operating license, which will essentially result in a decrease in oversight and public scrutiny, according to three senior officials at the Energy Department.
In an October 30, 2007 news release, the DOE said it "selected NuStart to demonstrate the NRC's untested process for licensing new reactors in the United States, and for obtaining regulatory approval of new reactor designs."
Meanwhile, the Energy Department has undertaken a massive public relations effort, expected to continue until the end of 2008, to promote nuclear energy as the new "green" energy.
Last October, Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman, in a speech at a nuclear power conference held at the Howard Baker Center for Public Policy at the University of Tennessee, said nuclear energy is:
* "safe, clean and reliable. And, for the foreseeable future, it is the only mature, emissions-free technology that can supply the power America will need to meet the projected increase in demand for electricity over the next 25 years. This is one of the reasons we have put so much emphasis on bringing about a nuclear renaissance here in the United States."
In 2003, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology released a study, "The Future of Nuclear Power," that said even with volatile natural gas prices and a wildly fluctuating market, the cost of producing electricity from nuclear power plants is still 20 percent more expensive than electricity produced from gas-fired power plants, and 60 percent more expensive than electricity produced from a coal-fired power plant.
Earlier this year, Bodman, while promoting nuclear energy as an alternative to fossil fuels, said the Bush administration would continue to oppose mandatory reductions in greenhouse gases in the form of CO2 caps, following a report released in January by the world's leading climate scientists that said the emissions of greenhouse gases were to blame for severe heat waves, floods and an increase in more intense hurricanes and tropical storms. Bodman said mandatory caps could financially ruin some of the energy companies responsible for polluting the air.
"There is a concern within this administration, which I support, that the imposition of a carbon cap in this country would - may - lead to the transfer of jobs and industry abroad (to nations) that do not have such a carbon cap," Bodman said in February. "You would then have the US economy damaged, on the one hand, and the same emissions ... potentially even worse emissions."
Before being tapped as Energy Secretary, Bodman ran a chemical company, Cabot Corporation that spent years on the top five lists of the country's worst polluters. In 1997 alone, Cabot was responsible for the 54,000 tons of toxic emissions his company's refineries released into the atmosphere. Cabot was identified as the fourth-largest source of toxic emissions in Texas.
Cabot is the world's largest producer of industrial carbon black, a byproduct of the oil refinery process. Bodman is the wealthiest official in the Bush administration. His net worth is estimated to be between $42 million and $164 million, the bulk of it in Cabot stock, deferred compensation, and other benefits.
Perhaps the thorniest issue neither Cheney, Sell, Bodman nor the nuclear energy industry has yet to address is how it plans to dispose of nuclear waste. The Department of Energy, the agency largely responsible for monitoring nuclear waste, submitted an application to the NRC recently to build a repository at Yucca Mountain, the site of a former nuclear testing ground in Nevada, where the agency has proposed burying the waste deep underground.
But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, the Democrat from Nevada, is opposed to the DOE's plan, and has vowed to continue to cut funding for the Yucca Mountain project.
"In over 50 years of operating experience, the nuclear industry still has not managed to solve the problems of safety, security, and disposal of highly dangerous radioactive waste," said Jon Block, nuclear energy and climate change project manager for the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). "Until that happens, we're much better off investing in safer, cleaner energy sources such as renewable wind, geothermal, tidal, and solar projects."
Last week, Nevada State Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto requested that the NRC decline to register the license application or schedule the matter for hearings, calling it "legally deficient."
Bodman had earlier declared that the application, the first step in a four-year review process, to build and operate the Yucca Mountain repository "will stand up to any challenges from anywhere."
--Jason Leopold
--The Public Record
[Editor's Note: The Public Record is republishing an investigative story originally posted in November to demonstrate the similarities between Sen. John McCain's nuclear energy plan and a behind-the-scenes effort by Vice President Dick Cheney to revive the nuclear power industry.]
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Sacramento Business Journal
August 07, 2008
Appeals court sends nuke waste case back for review
by Celia Lamb
A federal appeals court Thursday struck down more than $80 million in awards to the Sacramento Municipal Utility District and to Pacific Gas and Electric Co. for nuclear waste storage, sending the case back to a lower court for a review of the amounts.
The U.S. Court of Federal Claims decision awarded $39.8 million to SMUD and $42.8 million to PG&E in 2006; those amounts equaled about half the amount sought by each utility.
The U.S. Court of Appeals ruled Thursday that the federal claims court erred in allowing the government to deduct some funds from the amount owed to SMUD and PG&E.
SMUD and PG&E had contracts with the U.S. Department of Energy to dispose of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste in a permanent repository beginning in 1998. But the federal government has yet to open a permanent high-level nuclear waste dump. A proposal to put the dump at Yucca Mountain in Nevada has faced strong opposition from residents of that state.
SMUD shut down Rancho Seco nuclear plant in 1989 due to local opposition. It built a temporary dry-storage facility for the fuel rods and high-level radioactive waste at Rancho Seco, and continues to maintain the site.
Sacramento-based SMUD paid $40 million into a federal nuclear waste fund. It sued the U.S. Department of Energy for $78.6 million in construction, labor and other expenses.
PG&E, based in San Francisco and the biggest utility serving the Sacramento region, continues to store nuclear waste at its closed Humboldt Bay and still-operating Diablo Canyon nuclear plants. It made a $4 million payment to the DOE in 1983 and has paid about $5 million per quarter since then into the DOE’s nuclear waste fund.
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The Republican
August 07, 2008
No easy answers on nuclear waste
The facts and figures surrounding Yucca Mountain, the proposed Arizona site that would hold the nation's nuclear waste, never fail to astonish. The cost, which continues to climb with each passing year, now stands at an estimated $96 billion. And the amount of waste, which by some calculations could come in at 122,000 tons, is not easily brushed aside.
But there is one number that stands out among all the others, that forces one to take a serious step back to consider the implications of Yucca Mountain specifically and the nation's nuclear waste more generally: Some of the spent nuclear fuel will remain highly radioactive for a million years.
What we've got on our hands here is a very real - and very long-lasting - problem.
We have argued previously in this space that a rush toward Yucca Mountain may not be the wisest of choices. Imagine tons and tons of dangerous spent nuclear fuel hurtling across the nation on interstate highways and on rail lines and aboard barges, zipping through urban and suburban areas, beside rivers and lakes and municipal water supplies, through rural farmland and across bridges great and small. Then, imagine this happening year after year - without a single accident.
It's almost enough to make you think that doing nothing at all is the best choice. Until you consider what doing nothing at all actually means.
There is no easy solution to this problem. And it is not going to just go away.
Yucca Mountain is in the news again following the newest cost estimate from the Energy Department. It should remain a real part of the debate as calls for the construction of new nuclear power plants continue to mount. We are not suggesting that the reality of nuclear waste should rule out new nuke plants. But it has got to be a part of the discussion.
The nation doesn't need to come up with definitive plans tomorrow, but we shouldn't wait forever. We don't, after all, have a million years to decide on the next - and wisest - nuclear move.
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CNNMoney
August 07, 2008
McCain's nuclear plan: Doable, but risky
Experts agree that a big investment in nuclear energy would help wean the U.S. off oil but the move would be expensive - not to mention the safety controversy it will drum up.
By Steve Hargreaves
CNNMoney.com staff writer
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- John McCain's call for a big push into nuclear power can certainly be met - if the country is willing to pay more for power and tolerate the safety risks.
Earlier this week McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, said he wants to build 45 more nuclear power plants to make the country more energy independent. That would add significantly to the nation's current fleet of 104 active plants, which produce about 20% of the nation's power.
The advantages to nuclear power are primarily two-fold: It doesn't emit greenhouse gases, and it is a reliable form of electricity produced from uranium - a fairly abundant domestic resource.
McCain and others have been touting nuclear energy as a possible replacement for foreign oil, if and when the country shifted to electric cars.
The utility industry is behind the construction of more nuclear plants.
"We have been saying for years that we have to not only preserve our current fleet [of nuclear plants], but enlarge it significantly," said Jim Owen, a spokesman for the Edison Electric Institute.
Obstacles to nuclear power
But the utility industry has not brought a new nuclear plant online since 1984.
Regulatory hurdles and public opposition to nuclear plants following the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island in 1979 are often cited for the freeze in new plants. Yet what almost everyone cites as the main obstacle now is cost: Nuclear power is just plain expensive.
It costs between $6 billion to $8 billion to build a new nuclear reactor, according to Steve Kerekes, a spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute. That's about four times the cost of building a new similar-sized coal plant.
If McCain wants 45 new plants, he'll have to provide the utility industry with some incentives to take on this huge up front expense.
These could come in the form of low-interest loans, laws restricting greenhouse gases (which would make coal more expensive) or the construction of a long-promised facility to handle the waste.
"The cost of building them is immense," said Peter Tertzakian, chief energy economist at ARC Financial, a Calgary-based private equity firm. "The commitment has got to be long term."
While the costs to build a nuclear plant are high, fueling it with uranium is relatively cheap.
Over the long term, nuclear power is thought to be competitive with other forms of power generation.
The total costs to produce nuclear and wind power are expected to run about 7 cents per kilowatt hour in 2015, according to projections by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Coal and natural gas are thought to cost just a penny less, mostly due to the rising price of fossil fuels.
And, as the Edison Institute's Owen points out, in a world facing greenhouse gas restrictions and using ever more power, "the cost of whatever we are going to do is going to be big."
The safety controversy
If the cost issue is overcome, there is still the safety issue.
"Nuclear is [not] all that clean," the environmental group Greenpeace writes on its Web site. "You still have to mine the uranium used in the reactors - and mining is a dirty, polluting process. And you have to store the nuclear waste somewhere - waste that can be around for centuries, sitting in a storage facility somewhere, susceptible to leaks."
The government has long planned to build a long-term waste storage facility at Nevada's Yucca Mountain. But people that live nearby are unsurprisingly opposed to the idea, and construction has been held up for years.
In the meantime, radioactive waste is stored on-site at nuclear plants. The Nuclear Energy Institute's Kerekes says the total amount is small - all the waste produced from decades of nuclear power would fill up a football field to the depth of 20 feet.
And Kerekes said he is confident that construction at Yucca Mountain - which by congressional decree couldn't handle much more than the current waste but, Kerekes said, could be expanded to take several times that amount - will begin in the next four years.
But with Nevada Democrat Harry Reid currently running the show in the Senate, Kerekes' confidence may be a bit misplaced.
"The proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump is never going to open," said Reid in a statement on his Web site.
"I have successfully fought against the proposal to store nuclear waste in Nevada for over two decades because it threatened the health and safety of Nevadans and people across our nation."
Some also question nuclear plants' vulnerability, especially in an age fraught with terrorist concerns.
To illustrate this point, the Web site of environmental group Greenpeace begins its discussion on nuclear power with a photo of two reactors painted with a red bull's-eye.
It's true that nuclear technology has gotten much safer since the days of Three Mile Island and the Chernobyl disaster, and the government says security has greatly improved since Sept. 11.
But statistics from security tests done in the 1990s, the most recently available, are not reassuring.
Of the 81 security tests done between 1991 and August 2001, nearly half turned up lapses that could lead to core damage and probable radioactive release, according to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Kerekes said those tests were designed to turn up failures, and they are now corrected.
Many people say other countries have run safe nuclear programs for decades.
McCain is also confident nuclear plants pose little danger, telling the New York Times recently they are "safe, efficient, inexpensive and obviously a vital ingredient in the future of the economy of our nation and in our mission to eliminate over time our dependence on foreign oil."
Still, that may not be reassuring to communities where these plants get built.
"Everyone's OK with it, until they find out one's going in their backyard," said Tertzakian.
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Energy Central
August 07, 2008
Letters from Readers
World Leaders Endorse Nuclear Power - July 23, 2008
This is all well and good, but I wonder which of these countries are going to volunteer to dispose of the waste. I say that we just ship our nuclear waste to Japan, since their officials seem to be in support of nuclear energy.
I lived on a farm 50 miles away from the 3 Mile Island incident, when that happened. The following year, all of the crops on the farm came up deformed. So, while no direct deaths were caused (I suspect the health of some people were harmed as a result of this meltdown), we know that it was not contained.
The facility should have been condemned immediately by government officials, since it compromised the health of the public.
Sean Reilly
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For the United States I have just 4 questions:
1. What does one do with the spent fuel rods?
2. How does one protect the containment structure against terrorist attack?
3. From where will we purchase the fuel?
4. Does anyone really know (within a factor of two or three times) any estimate how much nuclear facilities will cost?
Questions 1 and 2 have no answers at the moment.
Question 3 has some options in countries in Africa and Australia and perhaps Canada.
Concerning number 4, the prices quoted from earlier prices included tremendous subsidies. Does anyone doubt that now those costs will not be escalated by a factor of 4 or 5?
With all due respect to world leaders, there are areas of the world where a nuclear portfolio would fit in very nicely, but in the United States we have other, less expensive and safer options. One option is coal gasification!
Joe Langenberg
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I just loved your article; it states what some of us have said for some thirty years since the demise of the nuclear power plant (NPP) business notably in the West, ignoring France. France has had the superior logic in these matters. They realized about dealing with unstable countries in the Middle East! We should have realized this also, especially after the Arab embargo in the mid-seventies.
The West was hornswaggled by the various Greens, 'Oh we can manage on renewables, etc.!' Their actions through the legal system pushed up the cost of NPP units by changes in plant hardware and legal delays. We now have reached a state in which there is no US owned nuclear business. Equipment construction of heavy components is in other countries. Universities had cut out their nuclear courses, so very few are being trained. Most of our NPP work staff are old or have gone to other businesses or retired! The Greens, through Jimmy Carter and his mob have effectively destroyed the NPP business in this country. Now we are looking at O'B as the new Jimmy Carter as the messiah to return jobs to the US. I see no hope from this quarter. I would mention that some of the Greens have changed their position on NPP construction, just to show that even the logic that the French had all these years ago is still the same, why deal with the unstable part of the world, when we have (had?) the capability here? Our politicians seem to imagine that normal rules and logic does not apply to them. We should have preserved our NPP design and construction capability but no one thought it was necessary.
We have a tendency to joke about the French, but in this matter as in many other matters, they are on the ball. Perhaps we can restore the strength of the NPP business, remember the basic designs for the French program came from Westinghouse. The Westinghouse designs were and are the dominant Pressurized Water Reactor NPP designs in the world, and they're now owned by the Japanese! Jimmy Carter and the rest of the US politicians have a lot to answer for to the US population.
In addition, we have the fiasco of Yucca Mountain, with Harry Reid trying to prevent its construction. Also, there is Jimmy's role in stopping the reprocessing of spent fuels, because of mythical terrorists removing highly radioactive materials from these facilities, why would they worry when they might just steal a bomb from the Russians or Pakistanis at less risk? The above are not the only poor decisions taken by poor old Jimmy, what about removal of the Shah and the subsequent hostage problems in Iran leading to our current position with Iran's need for a nuclear weapon?
A. J. Spurgin
San Diego, CA
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Wall Street Journal
August 07, 2008
Nuclear Utilities Win Appeal Over Radioactive-Waste Facility
By Lauren Pollock
In the latest development of a longstanding contract dispute, a federal appeals court reversed and remanded a trio of cases concerning damages owed to nuclear utilities as a result of the government's failure to build a nuclear-waste facility.
The appeals court said the damages awarded weren't calculated properly by the court of Federal Claims. As such it voided $42.8 million in damages awarded to PG&E Corp.'s Pacific Gas & Electric utility, $39.8 million to the Sacramento Municipal Utility District and $142.8 million to three former New England nuclear-plant operators.
The companies originally sought compensation for having to store spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste past the time the federal government agreed it would begin do so in a permanent, secure facility. Congress in still fighting over building a facility in Nevada's high desert for that purpose.
After being awarded the damages, the firms appealed saying the Federal Claims court didn't use the right measurement in calculating the awards. In the case of the Sacramento utility, the appeals court also noted an error in allowing the government to make deductions from the amount owed to the utility, which owns the Rancho Sero nuclear power plant.
PG&E is building a storage facility at one of its California nuclear plants in part to compensate for the federal delay.
Yankee Atomic Electric Co., Maine Yankee Atomic Power Co. and Connecticut Yankee Atomic Power Co. also constructed a storage facility to store waste and modified other storage facilities. The three companies, which were created by consortiums of utility firms to operate nuclear power plants in New England, have ceased producing nuclear power
All the utilities paid fees to the Department of Energy's Nuclear Waste Fund beginning in 1983 under a contract that required the Energy Department to begin accepting fuel for storage by Jan. 31, 1998. But the government didn't meet that deadline and has yet to accept the waste.
Two months ago, in a milestone in the government's effort to provide a permanent storage site for nuclear waste, the Bush administration applied for a license for the first national repository for spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste at Nevada's Yucca Mountain. But earlier this week, the Energy Department estimated the repository will cost $96.2 billion through the time it is sealed in 2133, up more than two-thirds from the last estimate in 2001, giving more ammunition to the plant's opponents.
With the Nuclear Regulatory Commission review expected to take at least three years, details such as costs will fall in the lap of a new U.S. president. Sen. Barack Obama opposes the Yucca Mountain application, while Sen. John McCain showed his support for the industry by visiting a nuclear power plant earlier this week.
--Write to Lauren Pollock at lauren.pollock@dowjones.com
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
August 06, 2008
Projections for Yucca revised
Estimated cost of nuclear waste dump: $96.2 billion
By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- The Department of Energy on Tuesday issued new cost estimates for a Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository that would be bigger, would operate longer and would cost billions of dollars more than earlier planned.
The department in a long-awaited report announced the price tag on the proposed Nevada waste site has grown to an estimated $96.2 billion. Counting inflation, costs increased by 67 percent over DOE's previous estimate, which was $57.5 billion in 2001.
In the intervening years, the project has been delayed and redesigned. DOE officials also made a key assumption that the repository will be expanded by Congress to make room for larger volumes of spent nuclear fuel being generated by commercial power plants.
Lawmakers in 1982 set a 70,000 metric ton capacity limit for the repository. The Yucca Mountain project director said Tuesday the newest cost figures reflect a repository that would hold 122,100 metric tons of high level waste from the U.S. military and operating nuclear power plants, including 47 that have been granted license extensions to run another 20 years.
"This is our current estimate of what the whole repository program is going to cost -- how much to build it, operate it and close it down," said Ward Sproat, director of DOE's Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management. Sproat said $96 billion "is a lot of money, but compared to what? I would argue strongly the cost of doing nothing is a lot higher."
About $16 billion of the new cost estimate stems from inflation since 2001, Sproat said. Other cost hikes are because of larger amounts of waste to be stored and to refinements in repository designs, he said.
While costs have grown, so has the amount of nuclear waste needing to be disposed, Sproat said. When broken down into a unit price, the cost per fuel bundle has grown only 10 percent, he maintained.
The "total system life cycle" cost purports to include everything associated with the Yucca project for a 150-year period since it was initiated in 1983 to when DOE says it would be decommissioned, the year now set for 2133.
The new cost figures make room for 26 percent more nuclear waste for disposal than previously estimated, according to DOE's report. By extension, DOE would run nuclear waste trains to the Yucca site for an additional 16 years, and insert nuclear waste canisters into Yucca Mountain for an additional 25 years.
If more reactors are built as part of the touted "nuclear renaissance," the government could be faced with further expansion at Yucca or the need to build a second repository.
The report is likely to provoke debate in Congress, and concern over dollars. The DOE costs are based on a best-case scenario that envisions the repository largely being constructed and receiving waste by 2017, a schedule that even department officials have said is unlikely.
The new cost estimate also underscores the Yucca program's financial shakiness. It assumes Congress will appropriate more than $1 billion a year for construction when lawmakers have not allocated more than half that amount in most recent years.
It also figures Congress will enact "fix Yucca" legislation to remove a number of regulatory obstacles, but lawmakers have shown little interest in that so far. It also assumes no delays from licensing protests and lawsuits, which would come as a surprise to attorneys for the state of Nevada who are said to be preparing stacks of challenges.
Sproat said more delays mean more costs. The Energy Department did not run specific calculations of where the project might end up cost-wise under less favorable scenarios.
The DOE also did not calculate the cost of leaving waste stored at power plants for any extended period, an option that Nevada lawmakers and some environmental advocates have urged the government to consider.
The Energy Department in June reached a key milestone when it sent the Nuclear Regulatory Commission a 17-volume application to build a Yucca repository. The NRC is conducting a preliminary review to determine whether the application warrants being docketed for an intensive 3- to 4-year licensing process.
Bob Loux, who spearheads Nevada's official opposition to the Yucca project as director of the state Agency for Nuclear Projects, said the Yucca cost report is of limited value.
"What's the point of this?" Loux asked.
Loux said the DOE did not make it possible to get a clear picture of how much it would cost to build a repository limited to 70,000 metric tons of waste, which is current law.
"Secondly I think most people would take the DOE number for construction and throw in another half," said Loux, who said the cost for the Yucca site could end up closer to $120 billion to $150 billion.
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Forbes
August 06, 2008
Politics
Nukes Need Money
Brian Wingfield and Joshua Zumbrun
It's late summer in Washington at the tail end of a lame duck presidency. And that means one thing for Beltway insiders: open season for lobbying.
The nuclear energy industry is one group in a good position to take advantage of the changing of the guard. And one of its biggest guns--former New Jersey Gov. and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christine Todd Whitman--is drumming up publicity for what might be a nuclear renaissance in the U.S. within the next few years.
"Right now the only base form of power that we have that doesn't emit any greenhouse gases or other pollutants while producing power is nuclear," she said in a recent interview with Forbes.com. She says the U.S will need 25 to 27 new reactors by 2030 if nuclear power is to continue to produce 20% of the nation's electricity, the current level.
Whitman's got a vested interest in seeing the U.S. nuclear industry bloom. She spoke to Forbes.com in her role as co-chair of the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition, a pro-nuclear group whose very broad membership includes nuclear power heavyweights like Exelon (nyse: EXC - news - people ), AREVA (other-otc: ARVCF.PK - news - people ) and Southern Co.. It's funded by the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), an industry organization.
But she's also got a point. There's a lot of buzz about nuclear power around the country. Republican presidential candidate John McCain says he wants to see 45 new plants built by 2030. Democrat Barack Obama says it's "unlikely" the U.S. can meet its climate goals without the help of nuclear power, though he wants the waste issue resolved. Both are pushing for a new regulatory mechanism to curb greenhouse gas pollution, a boon for operators of nuclear plants. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission expects applications for as many as 34 new reactors by 2010.
There's a concern tempering the industry buzz, and it has nothing to do with nuclear waste, though that still remains a significant issue. The problem: money. In simplest terms, there's no such thing as a small, cheap nuclear power plant.
Speaking at a nuclear energy conference at the Center for Strategic and International Studies last week, NEI lobbyist Richard Myers said a new, two-unit nuclear power plant could cost as much as $14 billion. By comparison, the entire market capitalization of many companies in the industry is barely double this, or smaller. Southern, FPL Group (nyse: FPL - news - people ), Dominion Resources (nyse: D - news - people ), Duke Energy (nyse: DUK - news - people ) and Entergy (nyse: ETR - news - people ) have capitalizations in the $20 billion to $30 billion range. Of major firms in the industry, only Exelon is significantly bigger, at about $49 billion. A nuclear renaissance could run upwards of $200 billion in construction costs alone.
This makes financing a plant extremely difficult, and it is why investment bankers like John Gilbertson at Goldman Sachs and John Matthews at Morgan, Lewis & Bockius believe that a loan guarantee program from the federal government is of crucial importance.
The Energy Policy Act of 2005 created a program to guarantee loans on projects that avoid and curb greenhouse gas emissions, including nuclear power plants. From the lender's perspective, the guarantee is critical. Instead of a relatively small company betting the farm on a single project, the guarantee brings wealthy Uncle Sam to co-sign the loan, meaning investment banks could fund more-leveraged projects.
Last month, a Senate panel indefinitely approved $38.5 billion in funding for the loan guarantees, but the measure has still not passed the full Congress.
Other issues remain. The industry is concerned that Senate appropriators have reduced funding for the proposed waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. The NEI is also pushing for the creation of a "clean energy bank" that could offer loans and guarantees on nuclear and other energy projects. It wants to see the government create a cost-sharing program with the private sector for spent fuel-recycling units.
Moreover, Whitman says McCain's grand vision is a "nice idea" but it's "not going to happen," partly because one reactor component is only built in Japan.
Still, the industry's staying busy. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, a watchdog group, the NEI has spent $1.23 million on lobbying so far in 2008. In June, the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition released a study touting the job creation a nuclear renaissance could bring--as many as 700 jobs at each reactor, many of which pay upwards of $65,000 per year.
"Nuclear's not a silver bullet," concedes Whitman. Though it would certainly be cheaper if it was.
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Grist Magazine
August 06, 2008
Expanding Waste
Estimated cost of Nevada nuke-waste dump soars
The total cost of dumping nuclear waste at Nevada's Yucca Mountain repository will hit $96.2 billion, the Department of Energy estimated Tuesday. The estimate has jumped 38 percent, excluding inflation, since 2001. And it assumes no new construction of nuclear reactors; to put that in perspective, John McCain is pushing for the U.S. to build up to 45 new nuclear plants by 2030. The Energy Department ambitiously assumes that Yucca will begin accepting waste in 2020, continue through 2070, and close in 2113. It also estimates that the site could take in as much as 122,000 tons of nuclear waste, even though Congress has limited Yucca's capacity to 77,000 tons. About 64,000 tons of used reactor fuel is already chillin' at 121 temporary sites across the U.S., and more than 2,000 tons are added each year.
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Reuters
August 06, 2008
Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump cost soars
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The planned U.S. nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain in Nevada will cost billions more than previously estimated due to a hike in the amount of waste it will have to dispose of and inflation, the Energy Department said on Tuesday.
The Yucca Mountain program, which began in 1983 and is expected to close in 2133, is expected to cost $96.2 billion in 2007 dollars over its 150-year life cycle, up 67 percent from a 2001 estimate of $57.5 billion.
Excluding inflation, the new estimate increased 38 percent to $79.3 billion.
The Energy Department said the increased costs are due to more than $16 billion in inflation and a 30 percent increase in the amount of nuclear waste that will need to be disposed of at the site.
In addition, the department it is going to cost more than previously expected to dispose of the fuel based on an updated design of the facility.
Despite the rise in costs, the department is not proposing a change in the fees paid by nuclear utilities for waste disposal.
Ward Sproat, director of the office of civilian radioactive waste management, said the Yucca Mountain program is expensive but it is worth it.
"It's a lot of money, but I would argue pretty strenuously the cost of doing nothing is a lot higher," Sproat told reporters.
The long delayed nuclear waste dump is expected to be opened in 2020 at the earliest, the department said in June.
Located about 90 miles from Las Vegas, the site is designed to hold millions of pounds of radioactive waste from U.S. nuclear power reactors underground and tons of leftovers from the country's nuclear weapons program.
Nuclear waste is currently stored at 121 temporary locations in 39 states across the country.
--Reporting by Ayesha Rascoe; Editing by Marguerita Choy
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Wall Street Journal Blogs
August 06, 2008
Green Ink: Dueling Energy Plans as Paris Hilton Joins the Fray
Posted by Keith Johnson
Crude rebounded over $120 after an explosion at a big BP pipeline in Turkey, Bloomberg reports. But falling demand has plenty of producers concerned about oil falling to $100—or lower. Now, the FT reports, big producers are piling into hedges to protect themselves against plummeting prices—which could be helping push oil lower. Platt’s The Barrel asks why hedging for airlines is always a lose-lose proposition, now that oil’s fallen 20% in a month.
Higher oil prices have given Iraq a huge windfall, but the country is spending less than 1% of its $80 billion oil earnings on reconstruction projects, sparking anger at the big U.S. Iraq clean-up bill, in the WaPO and the WSJ (sub reqd.).
If driving more efficiently is the answer to cutting oil imports, Nissan has the answer: a new “eco-pedal” that pushes back when drivers accelerate too much, at CSM’s Bright Green Blog and Earth2Tech. BP is banking on second-generation biofuels to make oil supplies last longer, with a $90 million U.S. investment, in the WSJ (sub reqd.). Will better batteries help? EEStor says it is coming closer to perfecting its new batteries, which store three times more juice than lithium-ion batteries, at the MIT Technology Review.
More fallout on Sen. Obama’s big energy speech. The WSJ edit page says the senator just doesn’t get it—renewable energy will be hard-pressed to make up for demand growth in energy, let alone replace any existing coal plants, and ethanol mandates are a bad idea:”Just because Mr. Obama’s plan is wildly unrealistic doesn’t mean that a program of vast new taxes, subsidies and mandates wouldn’t be destructive.” Andy Revkin offers the annotated version of the Obama speech at Dot Earth.
John McCain returned to pitching nuclear power, with a visit to Detroit’s Fermi nuclear plant, at Washington Wire. The choice wasn’t ideal for the nuclear proponent, Grist argues, noting Fermi’s checkered safety record. The visit was just one more of McCain’s “greatest misses,” from touting offshore drilling in Caifornia to nuclear in Nevada, notes the Huffington Post. Oh—and the pricetag for nuclear storage in Yucca Mountain rose again, to $96 billion, in the WSJ (sub reqd.).
Paris Hilton strikes back with a campaign ad of her own, actually pitching a coherent energy plan. Or maybe not—given that Ms. Hilton is now a fixture in the campaign, The New Republic parses her plan as well. Meanwhile, Tom Friedman goes to Greenland and learns “climate-speak,” in the NYT.
T. Boone Pickens’ plan is a boondoggle, argues Holman Jenkins in the WSJ (sub reqd.). But not because he might get rich—the billionaire would get rich from realistic, achievable plans, not half-baked slogans, he argues. In any event, if the goal is to promote renewable energy, carbon taxes work better than subsidies, notes R-Squared. And even though both candidates are determined to press ahead with cap-and-trade schemes, Clive Crook says he’s not giving up on his carbon-tax dream.
Finally, China’s belated Olympic cleanup has drawn a lot of flak. But there are bright spots that plenty of Chinese hope last after the Games, the L.A. Times reports—like the fact that when you spit on the sidewalk, it doesn’t come out black anymore.
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Wall Street Journal
August 06, 2008
White House Increases
Cost Estimate for Nuclear Storage
By Siobhan Hughes and Stephen Power
The Bush administration sharply increased its cost estimate for building and operating the first national repository for spent nuclear fuel, throwing a potential curveball into the political debate over the project's future.
The Department of Energy said that building the planned repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada -- as well as operating it and transporting spent nuclear fuel there -- will cost $96.2 billion through the time it is sealed in 2133. That represents an increase of more than two-thirds from the government's estimate in 2001 of $57.5 billion.
The higher cost -- which officials said reflects inflation, an increase in the amount of spent fuel and design refinements -- could give ammunition to the plant's opponents but is unlikely to change minds in Congress, where most lawmakers long ago made up their minds about the project's viability. Many Democrats in Congress oppose the plan and many Republicans support it.
The U.S. government had planned to begin hauling spent fuel from the nation's nuclear plants and burying it at Yucca Mountain more than a decade ago. Environmental and political concerns have delayed its opening. Administration officials have said the earliest it could be in operation would be 2020, assuming sufficient funding.
Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain has expressed support for the project, while Illinois Democratic Sen. Barack Obama opposes it. Aides to Sen. Obama's campaign didn't respond to requests for comment. A spokesman for Sen. McCain said, "This is another example of unrealistic cost estimates for government projects. Senator McCain will demand that government estimates reflect the real costs of projects."
Opponents of Yucca Mountain question the site's suitability and cost, as well as the wisdom of transporting spent nuclear fuel across the country. Supporters say those fears are exaggerated and note that the government is legally obligated to take the spent fuel under the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act.
The DOE is facing dozens of lawsuits from utilities over its failure to haul away the waste and has already agreed to pay or been ordered to pay $710 million in the cases it has settled or lost, according to information provided by the Justice Department to Congress last year.
"It's a lot of money, but I would argue pretty strenuously the cost of doing nothing is a lot higher," Ward Sproat, the director of the DOE's office of civilian radioactive waste, said Tuesday.
Two months ago, the Bush administration applied for a license for the repository, a milestone in the efforts to provide a permanent storage site for the waste. With the Nuclear Regulatory Commission review expected to take at least three years, responsibility for managing the project will fall into the lap of a new U.S. president.
The cost of building and operating the storage facility is divided between taxpayers and ratepayers, with roughly 80% of the costs, or $77.3 billion, estimated to fall on ratepayers.
The fees associated with the ratepayer portion of the tab are currently adequate and don't need to be adjusted, as long as Congress provides sufficient funding for the remainder, Mr. Sproat said. The Bush administration is studying whether one repository will be enough.
The DOE is preparing to release a report, within the next month, on whether a second repository is needed. At the same time, opponents in Congress of the Yucca Mountain project are vowing to do all they can to kill it.
--Mark Peters and Elizabeth Holmes
--Write to Siobhan Hughes at siobhan.hughes@dowjones.com and Stephen Power at stephen.power@wsj.com
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World Nuclear News
August 06, 2008
Yucca Mountain cost estimate rises to $96 billion
The US Department of Energy (DoE) has issued a revised total cost estimate for the planned national used nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste (HLW) repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada.
The latest estimate puts the cost of research, construction and operation of the geologic repository over a 150 year period - from when work started in 1983 through to the facility's expected closure and decommissioning in 2133 - at $96.2 billion (in 2007 dollars). This is a 67% increase on the previous published estimate in 2001 of $57.5 billion. Excluding inflation, the new estimate increased 38% to $79.3 billion.
The new estimated cost of $96.2 billion includes some $13.5 billion that has already spent on the project; $54.8 billion for the construction, operation and decommissioning of the repository; $19.5 billion for transportation of the used fuel; and, $8.4 billion for other program activities.
The DoE said that the new cost estimate reflects a 30% increase in the amount of used nuclear fuel from commercial nuclear power reactors to be disposed of in the repository. In 2000, it was estimated that some 83,800 tonnes heavy metal (tHM) of used fuel would be stored, but the latest estimates put the quantity at 109,300 tHM. This increased amount - resulting from existing and anticipated operating licence renewals at US reactors - would extend the transportation period by 16 years and the emplacement period by 25 years, the DoE said.
In addition, increases in raw material costs and "a refinement of the repository design" have also contributed to the higher Yucca Mountain cost estimate.
The total cost of constructing and operating the repository is divided between utility ratepayers and taxpayers, with ratepayers estimated to pay just over 80%, or $77.3 billion. The DoE said that it has determined that the fee currently paid to the government for the Nuclear Waste Fund by nuclear utilities of 0.1¢ per kWh of electricity they generated remains adequate to cover the nuclear utility customers' share of the total costs. It is therefore not proposing a change in this fee.
Ward Sproat, director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management (OCRWM) commented: "This increased cost estimate is reasonable given inflation and the expected increase in the amount of spent nuclear fuel from existing reactors with licence renewals." He added, "We have marked significant project milestones this year and look forward to that progress continuing and nuclear waste currently sitting at 121 temporary locations around the country being safely stored at Yucca Mountain."
The USA has been planning the repository for many years. Since 1977, when it ruled that used fuel was to be treated as waste and could not be reprocessed to recover uranium and reduce its volume, the government has had a responsibility to provide final disposal of the fuel in a deep geologic disposal facility. According to the 1982 legislation, the DoE was supposed to start accepting fuel from utilities early in 1998, but its failure to provide a repository on time has meant that the fuel has had to be stored at reactor sites. Since 1998 some 60 lawsuits have been launched by US utilities to try to recover the extra costs incurred. Payouts totalling over $600 million have already been awarded, and with other lawsuits outstanding the compensation costs to the government could run into billions.
Yucca Mountain was approved by Congress and President Bush in 2002 as the site for the USA's first permanent used fuel and high-level waste geologic repository. At the beginning of June, the DoE submitted a licence application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for the construction of the repository.
The OCRWM's current projected completion date for the project is 2017, but the fate of the project would be with the next US President. The Democatric candidate, Barack Obama, "believes that Yucca Mountain is not an option" for long-term management of wastes, while Republican candidate John McCain would try to establish an international radioactive waste management scheme which could make Yucca Mountain unnecessary.
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OPB News
August 06, 2008
Yucca Mountain Price Going Up, What Does It Mean For Hanford?
By Anna King
Northwest Public Radio
Richland, WA
The feds say it's going to cost nearly 40 percent more to bore a huge tunnel into Yucca Mountain in Nevada. That's where Washington State plans to ship its most dangerous radioactive waste. Correspondent Anna King reports.
$96.2 billion dollars. That’s how much the federal government estimates it will now cost to build and run a deep storage site at Yucca Mountain for 150 years.
The reasons for the increase?
There is a lot more radioactive waste to store and inflation has driven up construction costs.
Hanford watchdogs says the cost increase is just one more reason that the state should have another plan if Yucca Mountain falls through.
Jane Hedges is with Washington’s Department of Ecology. She says questions at Yucca do not change the mission at Hanford.
Jane Hedges: "We’re moving ahead to make sure our waste is in a safe configuration so that it can be disposed of properly."
Hedges says that means converting radioactive sludge into more stable glass logs.
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Maryland Independent
August 06, 2008
Speakers mostly support reactor
Opponents question safety, necessity at hearing
By Erica Mitrano
About four times as many people spoke for than against a proposal to site a new nuclear reactor in Calvert County at a hearing Monday, but opponents were out in force as well.
The Aug. 4 hearing, held in Solomons by the Maryland Public Service Commission, was one in a series of hearings scheduled to determine whether the project will receive a Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity, which is required to go forward.
The parade of supporters included local business and political leaders, plant workers and local residents, while other local residents and a handful of environmental activists asked the PSC to deny the certificate.
Speaking on behalf of the Calvert County Board of County Commissioners, President Wilson Parran (D) said the county had reviewed the reactor’s proposed design and was confident it would be safe. The project would also help reduce greenhouse gas emissions, provide desirable jobs to Calvert County high school graduates and increase the energy supply, he said.
He also said that the alternative forms of energy, including wind and solar power, championed by skeptics of the expansion have their place but that their ‘‘intermittent nature” precludes their being a primary source of energy.
‘‘The fact is, the wind doesn’t always blow, and the sun doesn’t always shine,” Parran said.
Kevin Nietmann, a 28-year county resident and plant employee, said innovations in nuclear reactor design make the proposed reactor safer and more environmentally friendly than other U.S. nuclear power plants. He cited a desalinization plant included in the proposal to lessen the plant’s dependence on groundwater and a cooling tower to reduce the discharge of hot water into the Chesapeake Bay as two measures that would lessen its ecological impact.
‘‘Maryland needs new sources of power. These sources should include nuclear power,” Nietmann said.
Another county resident, Bill Peil, blasted much of the testimony as personally or politically motivated. The number of reactor supporters who live outside the county and would not be in immediate danger during a nuclear disaster also disturbed him.
‘‘I’m also offended by people who speak because they stand to expand their careers,” Peil said. ‘‘... It’s wrong that those people should be testifying to the advantage of the plant when they personally, they will benefit themselves.”
Joseph Krovisky of St. Leonard was milder in his criticism but still skeptical that those within a 10-mile radius of the plant would be able to escape during an emergency.
‘‘I have not heard anyone explain to me addressing how that [evacuation plan] would be implemented,” Krovisky said. ‘‘... I envision nothing but chaos and confusion, frankly, a large mess.”
Krovisky also questioned the viability of any long-term storage plan for nuclear waste, noting that the time it would take for the waste to become safe is more than that separating ‘‘us from the ancient Egyptians and Sumerians.”
Speaking after the hearing, George Vanderheyden, president and CEO of UniStar Nuclear, the consortium seeking to build the reactor, attempted to answer some of the skeptics’ questions but said he would not have time to get to all of them.
For waste storage, Vanderheyden said he hoped the embattled facility planned for Yucca Mountain, Nev., would be built, but that there is enough ‘‘dry-cask” storage space at Calvert Cliffs itself to store anticipated waste from the plant, including a third reactor. The large steel storage casks are encased in concrete for additional protection, he added.
In response to a comment that Calvert Cliffs doesn’t power Calvert County, Vanderheyden said Calvert countians stand to benefit from a third reactor just as much as anyone else in the state.
‘‘Twenty percent of all the electricity in Maryland is provided by Calvert Cliffs [units] 1 and 2 right now,” he said. ‘‘... Electricity goes to wherever the load is. It has nothing to do with who you pay your bills to.”
He also sought to reassure his listeners that the plant would be safe and that the proposed expense of building it would be worthwhile.
‘‘I would assure you, you don’t want us to build the lowest-cost nuclear power plant available or have it built by the lowest bidder,” he said. ‘‘You would not want that, and we would not do it, because we live here.”
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Los Angeles Times
August 06, 2008
McCain touts his nuclear plans at reactor site
The presidential candidate says he will build 45 new plants by 2030. He accuses rival Obama of not supporting that type of energy generation.
By Bob Drogin
NEWPORT, MICH. -- As steam billowed out of two giant hourglass towers in the distance, John McCain visibly stepped up his support Tuesday for nuclear power, an embattled industry that he argues must be part of America's energy future.
The presumptive Republican presidential nominee toured the Fermi 2 nuclear power plant, a 1,100-megawatt boiling water reactor on the shores of Lake Erie.
The site seemed an odd choice for a campaign event intended to promote the safety of nuclear power. A nearby reactor was decommissioned in 1975 after a partial fuel meltdown that caused no injuries.
The accident spawned a book and popular song, both titled "We Almost Lost Detroit."
But soaring pump prices have pushed energy to the top of voters' concerns, and the Arizona senator has increasingly focused his campaign efforts at highlighting his policies -- and criticizing those of his rival, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama.
Speaking to reporters after his tour, with the two cooling towers puffing over his shoulder, McCain launched a fresh attack on Obama, the presumed Democratic nominee.
"Sen. Obama has said expanding our nuclear power plants, quote, doesn't make sense for America, unquote," McCain said. "He also says no to nuclear storage and no to nuclear processing. I could not disagree more."
Obama's campaign has said that McCain is distorting the Democrat's position. In a statement issued before McCain toured the power plant, campaign spokesman Bill Burton said Obama "supports safe and secure nuclear energy. . . . However, before an expansion of nuclear power is considered, Obama thinks key issues must be addressed, including: security of nuclear fuel and waste, waste storage, and proliferation."
The two candidates disagree on how to treat and store the radioactive waste created during nuclear generation. McCain supports entombing spent fuel at Yucca Mountain, in the Nevada desert, while Obama opposes using the mountain facility.
McCain also has called for reprocessing spent nuclear fuel, as is widely done in France and other countries. Obama says experts must first solve safety and security concerns.
The Energy Department on Tuesday released a report that concluded it would cost $96.2 billion to research, build and operate Yucca Mountain until it closes in 2133, a 38% increase from a 2001 estimate. Part of that increase is based on a projection that it would need to store 30% more nuclear waste, requiring a major expansion of the planned facility.
McCain also slammed Obama for his recent comments and TV commercials criticizing him for accepting contributions from oil and gas industry executives and groups.
"I saw Sen. Obama's latest attack has to do with oil and campaign contributions," McCain said. "I think he might be a little bit confused, because when the energy bill came to the floor of the Senate, full of goodies and breaks for the oil companies, I voted against it. Sen. Obama voted for it. People care not only what you say, but how you vote."
McCain and Obama have frequently traded charges over the 2005 energy bill. Obama's campaign said he supported it because it promoted the development of alternative energy.
In his remarks to reporters, McCain again pledged to build 45 new nuclear plants by 2030, a sharp increase over the nation's 104 operating commercial reactors.
McCain has not explained how he would achieve that goal. Although the federal government already provides generous tax incentives and loan guarantees, no utility has begun construction on a new nuclear plant since the Three Mile Island nuclear disaster in western Pennsylvania in 1979 led to more federal regulations and local opposition.
Polls show the anti-nuclear fervor of the 1980s and 1990s has cooled considerably. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has received 10 new license applications since September 2007, and officials said they expected to have 18 by the end of the year.
Detroit Edison, the owner and operator here, has made tentative plans to construct a third reactor nearby. But in a fact sheet, the company said licensing and construction of a new nuclear power plant "could take as many as 11 years to complete."
McCain has held no news conferences this week, so as he left the podium, a reporter tried asking the candidate how he would build the new plants in only 22 years.
"You can do it," McCain replied as he strode away. "And it can take five years to build a nuclear power plant. You can ask our folks here."
--bob.drogin@latimes.com
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Chicago Tribune
August 06, 2008
Higher nuke waste disposal cost seen
Even if no new reactors are built, getting rid of the country's nuclear waste will cost $96.2 billion and require a major expansion of the planned Nevada waste dump beyond limits imposed by Congress, the Energy Department said Tuesday.
The revised cost estimate is for the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
The figure is $38.7 billion more than was anticipated in 2001.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
August 05, 2008
Yucca Mountain Project cost jumps to $96 billion
WASHINGTON -- The Department of Energy announced in a new report this morning the estimated total cost to build and operate a Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository would be $96.2 billion.
Counting inflation, the price tag increased by 67 percent over the department's most recent published estimate, which was $57.5 billion in 2001.
“This increased cost estimate is reasonable given inflation and the expected increase in the amount of spent nuclear fuel from existing reactors with license renewals,” said Ward Sproat, director of DOE's Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management.
The new cost estimate assumes that the Yucca repository would be expanded by 30 percent to handle additional waste being generated by nuclear utilities. The expansion would require approval by Congress, which to date has shown little interest in the plan.
DOE also assumes the repository, about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, would remain open until 2133 to manage larger waste volumes, at which point it would be sealed to entomb the highly radioactive materials.
Inflation accounted for $16 billion of the increase, DOE said.
The new costs were detailed in a report of the "total system life cycle" operations of the Yucca project.
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Las Vegas SUN
August 05, 2008
Feds raise Yucca price tag to $96.2 billion
By Lisa Mascaro
It's official: The Energy Department announced today that it will cost $96.2 billion to build the nation's nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain, operate it for the next 150 years and shut it down.
In a conference call today, the department's Yucca Mountain project director said the new estimate assumes more waste will eventually be stored at the mountain than now allowed. Department projections are counting on Congress to one day lift the 70,000 metric ton limit to 122,000 metric tons at the mountain 90 miles north of Las Vegas.
The new price tag is higher than the $57.5 billion estimated in 2001 due to inflation and the increased quantity and design changes, which account for 10 percent of the difference, said director Edward Sproat. He had suggested the new price tag weeks ago in advance of today's announcement.
The department has not estimated what it would cost to simply keep waste on site at power plants, as Nevada lawmakers who oppose Yucca Mountain have argued for years.
Yucca Mountain is at a pivotal crossroads as the two presidential candidates have starkly different attitudes on the repository. Sen. John McCain, the presumed Republican nominee, supports Yucca Mountain. Presumed Democratic nominee Sen. Barack Obama has vowed to withdraw the federal government's license application for the dump, if elected.
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Reno Gazette-Journal
August 05, 2008
Letter: No taxpayer money spent on repository
In the July 16 paper, you published an article entitled "Yucca project to cost $90 billion" by Erica Werner.
In the first sentence the author states "Turns out, it's going to cost taxpayers $32 billion more than first thought. ..." This statement is wrong. The money spent for the Yucca Mountain repository comes from the Nuclear Waste Fund established in 1983 (President Reagan).
Every utility that operates nuclear power plants contributes to the Nuclear Waste Fund 1/10 cent for every kilowatt-hour of nuclear electricity produced. It is this money that is used for the disposal of nuclear spent fuel.
Not a single penny of taxpayers' money has been used for the Yucca Mountain project. Nevada, of course, benefits from this out-of-state money spent in state.
Nicholas Tsoulfanidis
Reno
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AP Google
August 05, 2008
Report: Nuclear waste disposal will cost US $96B
By H. Josef Hebert
WASHINGTON (AP) — Even if no new reactors are built, getting rid of the country's nuclear waste will cost $96.2 billion and require a major expansion of the planned Nevada waste dump beyond limits imposed by Congress, the Energy Department said Tuesday.
The revised cost estimate for the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas came as the presumed Republican presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain, renewed his call for building as many as 45 new power reactors by 2030.
Such an expansion would require a waste disposal program well beyond what is envisioned by the current Yucca Mountain project, which itself has been highly controversial.
McCain is a strong supporter of the Yucca site, while his Democratic presidential rival, Sen. Barack Obama, has opposed it and believes other options should be examined. Obama also has shown little enthusiasm for new reactor construction.
The government now says the Yucca Mountain project in Nevada will cost $38.7 billion more than was anticipated in 2001 when the Energy Department estimated the life cycle cost of the program at $57.5 billion.
Ward Sproat, the Energy Department official in charge of the federal nuclear waste program, said $16 billion of that increase is pegged to inflation. The program also has become more expensive because Yucca will have to accept more waste than previously had been anticipated since current reactors are being allowed to operate longer, he said.
Sproat said the department had crunched no numbers on how much nuclear waste disposal would cost if there were a rush in reactor construction on the scale suggested by McCain.
The Yucca cost estimates cover waste only from existing reactors as well as from the defense program. "If there is a significant increase, a major nuclear renaissance with a large number of new plants, a second repository ... may be needed," said Sproat in a conference call with reporters.
The $96.2 billion — in 2007 dollars not accounting for future inflation — includes $13.5 billion already spent on the Yucca project, $54.8 billion for construction and operation over 150 years and closing costs anticipated in 2113. It assumes the site will begin accepting used reactor fuel in 2020 and continue accepting shipments for 50 years.
The Energy Department earlier this year submitted an application for a Yucca Mountain permit to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, with a decision expected in three to four years.
But the cost report Tuesday assumes that Yucca Mountain will have to accommodate far more waste — both commercial and defense — than stipulated in the NRC application and by Congress, which has limited the repository to 77,000 tons.
Sproat said the cost estimate assumes the repository will house as much as 122,000 tons of waste, of which 109,000 tons will be from the current fleet of commercial reactors. For that to happen, Congress will have to approve the expansion of the Yucca facility beyond 77,000 tons. Such an expansion would require additional storage tunnels, but no aboveground expansion, Sproat said.
The Yucca project has been highly contentious from the start, with Nevada politicians vigorously opposing it.
The site's future also may hinge on this November's presidential election.
Obama has called the Yucca project a mistake and that other options should be considered, including temporary, interim storage of waste until a more permanent solution can be developed.
In contrast, McCain believes Yucca — a deep underground repository not far from the Nevada Test Site where the country conducted nuclear explosions during the Cold War — is a suitable location for the tons of used reactor fuel, some of which will remain highly radioactive for a million years.
Sproat acknowledged the cost of Yucca Mountain is significant.
"But you have to say compared to what. ... The cost of doing nothing is a lot higher," Sproat said. He had no estimate of what it would cost to leave used waste at reactor sites or at interim storage facilities.
Eventually the material would have to be moved somewhere, he said. "All you're doing is ... pushing the whole problem out into the future and significantly increasing the cost."
Commercial power reactors have about 64,000 tons of used reactor fuel at power plants in 33 states awaiting shipment to Yucca Mountain, with the amount growing at the rate of 2,000 tons a year, according to the industry.
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Huffington Post
August 05, 2008
John McCain's Greatest Misses
Carl Pope
Yesterday Barack Obama was in Detroit to talk about plug-in hybrids and a new energy future. Today John McCain is showing up on another leg of his "Greatest Energy Misses" campaign tour. The tour began on June 17, in Houston, near the site of the huge Bay of Campeche oil spill, where McCain announced his flip-flop on offshore drilling.
He then meandered to Santa Barbara, site of the famous 1969 oil spill, which he used as a venue to dismiss the concerns of the residents of Nevada about the legendarily unsafe Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site, saying "it's a NIBMY problem. It's a NIMBY problem. We've gotta have the guts and the courage to go ahead and do what other countries are doing ..."
He next showed up in Las Vegas, where he didn't mention Yucca, but did talk about how important it was to drill for oil off Santa Barbara. He planned to fly to Louisiana on July 25, to talk about how safe the oil industry has become in recent years, but canceled his trip after a huge oil spill shut down 25 miles of the Mississippi River. Instead he doglegged over to Ohio, where he never mentioned his opposition to ethanol, but instead talked about how great agriculture was.
Now he's arrived in Detroit, where he lost the primary to Mitt Romney by telling Michigan voters that lost auto jobs simply weren't coming back -- ever. But he's not appearing at an auto plant. Instead, he's going to the infamous Fermi 1 Reactor, whose near meltdown in 1966 led to the coinage of the term "the China syndrome," and was analyzed in the book We Almost Lost Detroit. Fermi's never been turned into a safe nuke. After years were spent cleaning up the 1966 meltdown, the reactor suffered a "sodium explosion," and startup was delayed again. Finally the NRC denied the license renewal, and they had to shut it down in 1972. Fermi is now being decommissioned, but it's still a hazard. On May 22 of this year, another sodium fire broke out inside the reactor, and the decommissioning process had to be suspended.
So what in the world would McCain say about this history? His staff evidently decided that discretion was the better part of valor. McCain still went to Fermi, but he announced there would be no public appearance there -- which avoided the awkward problem of media questions about Fermi as the poster child for "nukes are safe -- it's all NIMBYism" platform on which McCain is running.
It's hard to understand how McCain can pretend that he is doing anything other than chasing the polls -- and the oil and nuclear industry's increasingly abundant lubrication of his campaign.
And if you'd like to hear the song "We Almost Lost Detroit," here it is.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b54rB64fXY4
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NPR
August 05, 2008
Obama, McCain Put Focus On Energy Plans
The major party presidential candidates are devoting more energy on the campaign trail to ... energy.
Sen. Barack Obama ripped into the oil companies Tuesday, promising alternatives to gasoline, while Sen. John McCain toured a nuclear power plant and vowed to support building 45 more like it.
Standing on a small stage set up on the basketball court at Austintown Fitch High School in northeastern Ohio, it didn't take long for Obama to go after McCain — linking the Arizona Republican to a pair of Washington politicians with low approval ratings.
"President Bush, he had an energy policy," Obama told the crowd. "He turned to Dick Cheney and he said, 'Cheney, go take care of this.' Cheney met with renewable-energy folks once and oil and gas (executives) 40 times. McCain has taken a page out of the Cheney playbook."
It's a playbook that Obama says favored big oil companies. The Democrat from Illinois told the crowd of more than 2,000 in the gymnasium that once in the White House, he would fund alternative and renewable fuels.
He promised to meet immediately with the Big Three car companies to see how the federal government can work with them to retool and speed the production of highly energy-efficient vehicles — including plug-in hybrids, which can be charged up in a few hours and make short commutes using no gasoline at all.
He said Ohio lost more than 200,000 manufacturing jobs during the Bush administration and that investing in a "green" economy — including the manufacture of fuel-efficient cars — could mean jobs for the state.
McCain Pushes Nuclear Power
Meanwhile, McCain showcased his support for nuclear power, visiting the Enrico Fermi nuclear plant in Newport, Mich.
McCain has called for a crash program to build 45 more nuclear plants by 2030.
"If we really want to enable technologies of tomorrow, like plug-in electric cars, we need electricity to plug into," he said.
McCain also criticized Obama for his lukewarm support of nuclear power.
"Sen. Obama has said that expanding our nuclear power plants — quote — 'doesn't make sense for America,'" McCain said. "He also says no to nuclear storage and nuclear re-processing. I could not disagree more."
In fact, Obama has said nuclear plants are likely to be part of the nation's energy mix, but he adds that a safe method of waste disposal is needed before additional plants are built.
McCain backs the Yucca Mountain waste-disposal site in Nevada — like Michigan and Ohio, a swing state in the fall election. Obama has opposed it.
Energy policy has become a major battleground for the two candidates, with McCain touting his "drill here, drill now" strategy and Obama calling for big investments in alternatives, such as wind and solar.
Neither of those strategies is likely to bring quick relief to drivers unhappy about high-priced gas this summer.
So both candidates have tried to sweeten their offer — McCain with a summer gas tax holiday; Obama with energy rebate checks, paid for with a tax on oil companies, and a release of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
An editorial in Tuesday's Detroit News says both these plans appear to be governed by political calculation rather than solid economics.
Editorial Page editor Nolan Finley says his paper has been very critical of McCain's gas-tax holiday. And, he says, Obama's proposals are equally short-sighted.
"It's pure pandering," Finley says. "It makes absolutely no sense in terms of long-term energy policy."
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UPI
August 05, 2008
Yucca Mountain cost estimate is increased
WASHINGTON, Aug. 5 (UPI) -- The U.S. Department of Energy says it has revised upward its cost estimate of the Yucca Mountain nuclear repository from its 1983 start to closure in 2133.
Officials said the new system life cycle cost estimate includes money needed to research, construct and operate Yucca Mountain for 150 years.
The new cost estimate of $79.3 billion, when updated to 2007 dollars totals $96.2 billion -- a 38-percent increase from the last published estimate in 2001 of $57.5 billion.
Ward Sproat, director of the department's Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, said the updated estimate takes into account a substantial increase in the amount of waste to be shipped and stored at the repository and more than $16 billion for inflation.
"This increased cost estimate is reasonable given inflation and the expected increase in the amount of spent nuclear fuel from existing reactors with license renewals," Sproat said. "We have marked significant project milestones this year and look forward to … nuclear waste currently sitting at 121 temporary locations around the country being safely stored at Yucca Mountain."
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YouTube
August 05, 2008
John McCain on Nevada Yucca Mountain
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPlaHQCKc34
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YouTube
August 05, 2008
Barack Obama's views on Yucca Mountain
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpwGnHRv-L4&feature=related
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Greenville News
August 05, 2008
Groups: Reactor-fuel test fails
Activists say 'excessive' growth in MOX assemblies should end plutonium trial
Tim Smith
COLUMBIA -- Officials have interrupted the multiyear test of converted plutonium fuel at a South Carolina nuclear reactor after the discovery of "excessive growth" in the fuel assemblies, two nuclear watchdog groups said Monday.
Officials with the two groups said the discovery has implications for other reactors, including Oconee Nuclear Station, where similar types of fuel assemblies using different fuel have produced "the same flaw."
But a spokeswoman for Duke Energy, which was testing the mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel at Catawba I near Rock Hill and also operates Oconee, said she knew of no problem with fuel assembly growth at Oconee.
Officials with the groups believe the government should suspend the mixed-oxide (MOX) program and re-examine the licensing process for new types of nuclear fuel. The discoveries are in effect a "failure" of the MOX test and throw the multi-billion dollar program, to turn surplus plutonium from the nation's nuclear arsenal into nuclear fuel, into doubt, the groups allege.
"The failure of the plutonium fuel experiment is another major setback for the MOX program and will further increase the already considerable cost overruns, delays and risks," said Tom Clements, Southeastern nuclear campaign coordinator for Friends of the Earth, a national environmental group. "Congress needs to pull the plug before even more taxpayer money is wasted."
A spokesman for the U.S. Department of Energy wasn't available Monday for comment.
Rita Sipe, a spokeswoman for Duke, referred questions about the long-term implications of the growth to federal energy officials.
According to documents on file at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, officials discovered the growth earlier this year after removing the four MOX fuel assemblies following their second 18-month test fuel cycle.
After determining that growth in the fuel assembly -- a framed collection of long metal tubes into which are placed the nuclear fuel pellets -- was greater than the company's standards allowed to place back into service, Duke officials decided to do more intensive analysis, Sipe said.
"A re-design of the Catawba Unit 1 Cycle 18 core design was required to remove MOX fuel assemblies from the core due to excessive assembly growth," records on file at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission state.
Sipe said the growth isn't visible to the human eye, and she disagreed with environmental officials that it poses a hazard.
"This is not a safety issue," she said. "All fuel assemblies grow. ... We're talking very small growth. It's not like something you can see."
She said some of the fuel will be sent to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee for analysis. Sipe said it is possible the MOX fuel assemblies could be reused, but for now they will be subject to thorough analysis.
The assemblies for MOX and Oconee are produced by the French company AREVA. A spokeswoman for AREVA could not be reached Monday.
An exact cause for the abnormalities has not yet been determined, Sipe said. Officials with the two watchdog groups said they believe the problem concerns the use of an alloy designed by AREVA in the fuel assemblies. Sipe said that is one possible cause under review.
"DOE should not cut corners in safety testing," said Edwin Lyman, a scientist for the Union of Concerned Scientists, a national nonprofit group.
"To go forward with MOX now, AREVA would have to redesign the MOX fuel, and Duke would have to repeat the entire experiment, delaying the testing program by at least eight years. DOE should instead dispose of the plutonium directly by mixing it with radioactive waste and encasing it in glass, which would be safer and cheaper than continuing the MOX program."
Lyman said among the problems the government now faces with the abnormalities in the fuel assemblies are that the French facility AREVA used to construct the fuel is now closed.
Similar flaws have been found in fuel assemblies at Three Mile Island, Davis-Besse in Ohio and Crystal River in Florida, the two groups said.
Construction on a MOX plant at the Savannah River site near Aiken began last year. The facility, estimated to cost $4.7 billion, is expected to open in 2016, eventually converting tons of plutonium into commercial nuclear reactor fuel as Russia does the same with surplus plutonium from its warheads.
Duke has agreed to pay $100 million annually for MOX fuel assemblies to go to Catawba and another nuclear plant in North Carolina.
The Energy Department said last year it planned to send plutonium in Washington state and at research laboratories in New Mexico and California to the Savannah River complex to improve security and reduce storage costs.
The plan calls for the plutonium to be either converted into MOX for use at commercial nuclear power plants or be encased in glass logs for eventual transfer to the Yucca Mountain high-level nuclear waste repository being planned in Nevada.
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Daily Kenoshan
August 05, 2008
McCain: Not Comfortable With Nuclear Waste Through Arizona, But Just Fine for Wisconsin
by Rosemary Wehnes
McCain Nuclear Plan Would Bring At Least 222 Casks of Dangerous, Highly Radioactive Nuclear Waste Through Wisconsin
Wisconsin, Milwaukee- As John McCain is paying a visit today to the Enrico Fermi nuclear generating station in Monroe, Michigan he can be expected to tout his costly plan to build 45 new nuclear plants by 2030 and 55 more after that.
This plan would effectively double the number of nuclear reactors and the amount of dangerous high-level nuclear waste that would need to be transported across the country.
The Sierra Club is today calling attention to the YouTube video that surfaced earlier this year which shows John McCain clearly saying-while shaking his head 'no'-that he would not be comfortable with nuclear waste traveling through his own home state of Arizona on its way to the unsafe and unproven Yucca Mountain site-something for which John McCain has been one of the Senate's biggest proponents.
The video can be viewed at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPlaHQCKc34
Transcript (beginning at 1:14): Interviewer: What about the transportation? Would you be comfortable with nuclear waste coming through Arizona on its way, you know going through Phoenix, on its way to uh Yucca Mountain? McCain (Shaking Head): "No, I would not. No, I would not."
"Why does John McCain think it's ok for hundreds of tons of dangerous nuclear waste to go through Wisconsin but yet too dangerous to go through his own state?" said Rosemary Wehnes, Midwest Associate Rep. "John McCain simply can't have it both ways when it comes to the nuclear waste issue. Right now he supports running shipments of dangerous nuclear waste through Wisconsin and sticking Nevadans with 77,000 tons of it forever, while at the same time saying he's uncomfortable with it going through his own backyard for even a day."
The bulk of Wisconsin nuclear waste (185 casks) would be transported through Milwaukee, including waste shipped via Lake Michigan into the Port of Milwaukee.
The Sierra Club also pointed out that the very nuclear plant that Senator McCain is visiting today once suffered a partial meltdown. Indeed, a book about the incident is entitled "We Almost Lost Detroit."
John McCain supports the Bush administration's plan to store our nation's nuclear waste at the unsafe and unproven Yucca mountain site-a white elephant that has wasted two decades and billions of taxpayer dollars. A plan to transport the waste released by the State of Nevada based on Department of Energy plans details the likely rail, truck, and barge routes that high-level waste would take on its way to Yucca Mountain. Approximately 222 casks of waste would travel through Wisconsin. Each cask would transport between 2 and 15 tons of high-level waste. In total, the dangerous waste would travel through more than 703 counties in 45 states. More than 123 million people live along the proposed truck routes alone. And more than 10 million people live within a half-mile of the proposed routes.
"John McCain is asking both Wisconsinites and Nevadans to gamble with our safety, yet it's not even a bet he's willing to take for Arizona," said Wehnes. "Just like with subsidies-he's against them, except when it comes to nuclear power and so-called 'clean coal'-John McCain wants to have his cake and eat it too on the nuclear waste issue. He's all for moving thousands of tons highly radioactive waste through communities across the country, except when it comes to his home state of Arizona."
In addition to being dangerous, John McCain's nuclear plan is a costly distraction from the real solutions to global warming. Based on cost estimates for new nuclear power plants put forth by utilities like Florida Power and Light, McCain's plan for 100 new nuclear plants could cost more than $1 TRILLION.
Over the years McCain has cast vote after vote in favor of Yucca Mountain and billions in subsidies for the nuclear industry, yet he has consistently voted against renewable energy and has refused to support extending key clean energy incentives that are in danger of expiring at the end of this year. Twice in recent months when extending these incentives failed by just a single vote and every single other Senator voted, McCain was nowhere to be found. Failing to extend these incentives could throw 116,000 people out of work in the wind and solar industries alone and sacrifice billions in lost economic growth.
Barack Obama, by contrast, opposes storing nuclear waste at the Yucca Mountain site. With regards to the role of nuclear power in general, Obama's energy plan released yesterday states:
"Before an expansion of nuclear power is considered, key issues must be addressed including: security of nuclear fuel and waste, waste storage, and proliferation."
--Paid for by the Sierra Club Political Committee, http://www.sierraclub.org/, and not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.
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Grist Magazine
August 05, 2008
A real energy plan for America
Efficiency now, 10 percent renewables by 2012, and one million plug-in hybrids by 2015
by Joseph Romm
Senator Barack Obama has fulfilled the promise of his earlier climate plan with a detailed and comprehensive "New Energy for America" [PDF] plan. Yesterday, he gave a major speech on this plan in Lansing, Michigan.
This is easily the best energy plan ever put forward by a nominee of either party:
* Increase Fuel Economy Standards: Obama will increase fuel economy standards 4 percent per each year while protecting the financial future of domestic automakers ...
* Invest in Developing Advanced Vehicles and Put 1 Million Plugin Electric Vehicles on the Road by 2015: As a U.S. senator, Barack Obama has led efforts to jumpstart federal investment in advanced vehicles, including combined plug-in hybrid/flexible fuel vehicles, which can get over 150 miles per gallon of gas ... [more details below]
* Partner with Domestic Automakers: Obama will also provide $4 billion retooling tax credits and loan guarantees for domestic auto plants and parts manufacturers, so that the new fuel-efficient cars can be built in the U.S. by American workers rather than overseas.
* Mandate All New Vehicles are Flexible Fuel Vehicles
* Develop the Next Generation of Sustainable Biofuels and Infrastructure
* Establish a National Low Carbon Fuel Standard: ... The standard requires fuels suppliers in 2010 to begin to reduce the carbon of their fuel by 5 percent within 5 years and 10 percent within 10 years.
This is the only way to jumpstart an end to our addiction to oil in a climate friendly way. Indeed, an accelerated transition to plug-in hybrids and electric cars -- a core climate solution -- must be the cornerstone of any serious effort to dramatically reduce oil consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. That is the crucial litmus test for any presidential candidate's energy independence or clean transportation policy.
As for the test of a candidate's grasp of electricity policy, energy efficiency is obviously the only cheap power left and a limitless resource and the core climate solution. Obama understands energy efficiency in a way few other major politicians do, as his plan makes clear:
* Deploy the Cheapest, Cleanest, Fastest Energy Source -- Energy Efficiency: Barack Obama will set an aggressive energy efficiency goal -- to reduce electricity demand 15 percent from DOE's projected levels by 2020. Implementing this program will save consumers a total of $130 billion, reduce carbon dioxide emissions by more than 5 billion tons through 2030, and create jobs. A portion of this goal would be met by setting annual demand reduction targets that utilities would need to meet.
* Set National Building Efficiency Goals: Obama will establish a goal of making all new buildings carbon neutral, or produce zero emissions, by 2030. He'll also establish a national goal of improving new building efficiency by 50 percent and existing building efficiency by 25 percent over the next decade to help us meet the 2030 goal.
* Overhaul Federal Efficiency Standards: The current Department of Energy has missed 34 deadlines for setting updated appliance efficiency standards ...
* Reduce Federal Energy Consumption: ... He will make the federal government a leader in the green building market, achieving a 40 percent increase in efficiency in all new federal buildings within five years and ensuring that all new federal buildings are zero -- emissions by 2025. He will invest in cost -- effective retrofits to achieve a 25 percent increase in efficiency of existing federal buildings within 5 years.
* Invest in a Smart Grid: ... Obama will pursue a major investment in our national utility grid using smart metering, distributed storage and other advanced technologies to accommodate 21st century energy requirements: greatly improved electric grid reliability and security, a tremendous increase in renewable generation and greater customer choice and energy affordability.
* Weatherize One Million Homes Annually ...
* Build More Livable and Sustainable Communities ...
* Flip Incentives to Energy Utilities: An Obama administration will "flip" incentives to utility companies by requiring states to conduct proceedings to implement incentive changes; and offering them targeted technical assistance. These measures will benefit utilities for improving energy efficiency, rather than just from supporting higher energy consumption. This "regulatory equity" starts with the decoupling of profits from increased energy usage, which will incentivize utilities to partner with consumers and the federal and state governments to reduce monthly energy bills for families and businesses. The federal government under an Obama administration will play an important and positive role in flipping the profit model for the utility sector so that shareholder profit is based on reliability and performance as opposed to total production.
Finally, a presidential nominee that really gets it.
The proposal has lots of other details on short-term solutions and promoting the supply of domestic energy. But let me focus on his low-carbon electricity supply plan:
* Require 10 Percent of Electricity to Come from Renewable Sources by 2012 [and 25 percent by 2025]. Barack Obama will establish a 10 percent federal Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) to require that 10 percent of electricity consumed in the U.S. is derived from clean, sustainable energy sources, like solar, wind and geothermal by 2012. Many states are already well on their way to achieving statewide goals and it's time for the federal government to provide leadership for the entire country to support these new industries. This national requirement will spur significant private sector investment in renewable sources of energy and create thousands of new American jobs, especially in rural areas. And Obama will also extend the federal Production Tax Credit (PTC) for 5 years to encourage the production of renewable energy.
* Develop and Deploy Clean Coal Technology ...
* Safe and Secure Nuclear Energy: ... It is unlikely that we can meet our aggressive climate goals if we eliminate nuclear power as an option. However, before an expansion of nuclear power is considered, key issues must be addressed including: security of nuclear fuel and waste, waste storage, and proliferation ... . As president, Obama will make safeguarding nuclear material both abroad and in the U.S. a top anti- terrorism priority. In terms of waste storage, Obama does not believe that Yucca Mountain is a suitable site. He will lead federal efforts to look for safe, long-term disposal solutions based on objective, scientific analysis. In the meantime, Obama will develop requirements to ensure that the waste stored at current reactor sites is contained using the most advanced dry-cask storage technology available.
He also repeats his climate pledge and his jobs pledge:
* Implement an economy-wide cap-and-trade program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050.
* Invest In A Clean Energy Economy and Help Create 5 Million New Green Jobs. Obama will strategically invest $150 billion over 10 years ...
Finally, back to the details of the plug-in hybrid proposal:
As president, Obama will continue this leadership by investing in advanced vehicle technology with a specific focus on R&D in advanced battery technology. The increased federal funding will leverage private sector funds and support our domestic automakers to bring plug-in hybrids and other advanced vehicles to American consumers. Obama will also provide a $7,000 tax credit for the purchase of advanced technology vehicles as well as conversion tax credits. And to help create a market and show government leadership in purchasing highly efficient cars, an Obama administration will commit to:
* Within one year of becoming President, the entire White House fleet will be converted to plug-ins as security permits; and
* Half of all cars purchased by the federal government will be plug-in hybrids or all-electric by 2012.
This is an aggressive, achievable, and most important of all, a necessary energy plan. Kudos to Senator Obama and his energy team.
--This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
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Heritage Foundation
August 05, 2008
Nuclear Energy’s Great, But What about the Waste?
Nick Loris
In response to rising energy prices the public perception on nuclear energy is quickly changing. In fact, a recent poll showed that 2 out of 3 Americans are in favor of building new nuclear plants.
Both presidential candidates have nuclear on the table as an option to meet energy demands, albeit Senator John McCain more distinctly defined his role for nuclear power: a minimum of 45 reactors by 2030. Senator Obama also recognizes nuclear energy’s role to play in America’s energy profile, but criticized McCain for a “half-baked” idea. Speaking in Las Vegas in June, Obama said:
“[Giving oil companies additional access to oil resources] doesn’t make sense for America. In fact, it makes about as much sense as his proposal to build 45 new nuclear reactors without a plan to store the waste some place other than right here at Yucca Mountain. Folks, these are not serious energy policies.”
Of course, concern over nuclear waste isn’t unique to just Senator Obama. Waste storage is one of the most important impediments to more nuclear power in the public’s mind. But both candidates are hesitant to give a well-defined solution to the problem of nuclear waste. We’re here to do just that.
Let’s start with some basics. What is nuclear waste? The Nuclear Regulatory Commission defines high-level nuclear waste as “highly radioactive materials produced as a byproduct of the reactions that occur inside nuclear reactors.” But to actually call it waste is misleading; this “used” fuel generally retains about 95 percent of the uranium it started with, and that uranium plus some other elements can be recycled. (There is also a separate definition for low-level radioactive waste here.)
So it can be classified as either waste or potential energy? How much of this stuff does the U.S. have? Over the past four decades, America’s reactors have produced about 58,000 tons of used fuel. That “waste” contains roughly enough energy to power every U.S. household for 12 years.
Okay, then what’s the problem? Heritage Research Fellow Jack Spencer explains it in detail here. The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 attempted to establish a comprehensive disposal strategy for high-level nuclear waste. It charged the federal government with the responsibility of disposing of spent nuclear fuel and created a structure through which nuclear energy users would pay for the service.
The federal government has since accumulated approximately $27 billion, but the nuclear waste is still sitting at reactor sites. The goal was to place it in a geologic repository in Nevada called Yucca Mountain but the government’s projected date of 1998 to open Yucca was slightly off-target. (The license application has been submitted by the Department of Energy and the earliest date it can be open is 2017.)
Needless to say, the nuclear companies that have paid into the Nuclear Waste Fund with rate payers’ money weren’t thrilled about this. Consequently, they sued the government. As a result, taxpayers have already paid $94 million in lawyer expenses and $290 million in damages. The government is appealing another $420 million award. Long-term liability projections are astronomical, reaching $7 billion by 2017 and $11 billion by 2020.
To make a long story short, the system is broken and the taxpayers are paying for it. Well, what’s the solution? First, despite the Yucca Mountain boondoggle, the repository remains critical to the management of used nuclear fuel. Even if nuclear waste is reprocessed, there will be remaining waste that needs to be placed somewhere else; opening a geologic repository is a necessary step. A more comprehensive approach would include a combination of interim storage, recycling, and geological storage.
Sounds great, but how do we get there? We’ve got an answer for that too, privatize the whole shebang. A free-market approach to managing nuclear waste is the only way to ensure that the commercial nuclear industry will be sustainable in the long run. Among the steps needed to privatize the system, as outlined by Spencer, include:
• Creating the legal framework that allows the private sector to price geologic storage as a commodity;
• Empowering the private sector to manage used fuel;
• Repealing the 70,000-ton limitation on the Yucca Mountain repository and instead let technology, science, and physical capacity determine the appropriate limit;
• Creating a private entity that is representative of but independent from nuclear operators to manage Yucca Mountain;
• Repealing the mil, abolish the Nuclear Waste Fund, and transfer the remaining funds to a private entity to cover the expenses of constructing Yucca Mountain; and
• Limiting the federal government’s role to providing oversight, basic research, and development and taking title of spent fuel upon repository decommissioning.
The full paper can be found here. It won’t be easy. But if we’re serious about nuclear energy meeting energy demands and environmental goals, it is without a doubt necessary.
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NewsBlaze
August 05, 2008
McCain Watch: A Campaign of, by, and for Big Oil and Its Lobbyists
WASHINGTON, Aug. 5 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- This week, with energy in the headlines and at the forefront of the economic struggles for America's families, Americans are demanding real solutions to soaring gas prices and the long-term energy crisis. But instead of looking ahead for comprehensive solutions to our nation's energy problems and towards reducing America's dependence on foreign oil and developing alternative energy sources, John McCain is turning to the Bush-Cheney play book which puts the interests of oil companies ahead of the interests of Americans. In fact, John McCain has at least 33 former oil lobbyists who advise him or fund-raise for his campaign.
McCain's oil lobbyists have represented many of the top oil companies - including Exxon, Shell, BP, Chevron Texaco, Occidental Petroleum, Sunoco and the American Petroleum Institute - and have even lobbied for these companies while advising McCain. It's no surprise that McCain's positions on energy policy are ever-more closely aligned with oil and gas corporations.
Senator McCain refuses to support a windfall profits tax on oil companies that would go to American families as rebates to help offset rising energy costs. Instead, McCain is offering a set of policies, from $4 billion in tax breaks for the top five oil companies to a gas tax "holiday" that wouldn't even fill a tank, that will do more for the oil industry than working Americans.
Oil companies are rewarding McCain generously for his corporate-friendly energy plan. McCain has received over $2 million from oil and gas executives and employees for his presidential campaign -- $1.1 million in June of this year alone. On a single day, June 24, nine Hess executives contributed $28,500 each for a total of $256,500. Hess' total contributions to McCain include the $57,000 one Hess office manager and her husband, an Amtrak foreman, insist that they contributed independently.
As Americans struggle with record gas prices, McCain continues to put corporate interests - and the fundraising bonus they bring his campaign - before Americans' interests, offering more of the same old politics and policies that resulted in record-breaking profits for Exxon and Shell last quarter - over $11.5 billion apiece - even as Americans struggled with record-high prices at the pump.
McCain won't be offering anything new on energy policy -- unless you count the steady stream of breaking stories exposing the depth and extent of McCain's ties to the oil and gas industry. For more on McCain's ties to the oil and gas industry click here to see the DNC's new web video "Puppet Masters": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VMfcOIegcs
McCain's Big Oil Lobbyists
33 McCain Advisors and Fundraisers Lobbied for Big Oil. "These new totals dwarf his previous fundraising from the industry. From 1989 through May 2008, John McCain had raised more than $1.3 million from the oil and gas industries, and 33 McCain staffers and fundraisers have received a total of $9.65 million in lobbying fees from the same sectors." [Campaign Money Watch, 7/31/08: http://www.campaignmoney.org/files/Its_A_Gusher.pdf]
Randy Scheunemann, Top McCain's Foreign Policy Advisor, Lobbied for BP Amoco. From 1999 until 2000, McCain's top foreign policy advisor Randy Scheunemann lobbied for BP Amoco, for which his firm was paid $120,000. Scheunemann lobbied on issues related to BP-Amoco's investments, as well as issues concerning international oil production. [Scheunemann/BP Amoco Lobbying Disclosures, Senate Office of Public Records]
Charlie Black Lobbied for Occidental, CNOOC and Yukos.
-- Black Lobbied for Occidental Oil Co., Earning Over $1 Million. From 2001 until 2007, Black lobbied for Occidental Oil company, earning his firm over $1,610,000 for his lobbying efforts. The issues for which Black lobbied on behalf of Occidental include: Energy issues in developing nations and oil drilling inRussia. [BKSH Lobbying Disclosures, Senate Office of Public Records]
-- BKSH Lobbied for Chinese Oil Conglomerate CNOOC. According to lobbying disclosure reports for BKSH, McCain advisor and name partner Charlie Black lobbied for Chinese state-owned oil conglomerate CNOOC Ltd. BKSH "engaged in telephone calls and meetings dealing with legislation in Congress to prohibit foreign energy companies from acquiring U.S. based energy companies." BKSH lobbied for only a short period - from July 2005 until August 2005 - but was paid $60,000 for its efforts. [BKSH Supplemental Statement, 12/31/05; BKSH Amendment, 8/15/05; BKSH Amendment, 3/27/06]
-- Black Lobbied for Russian Oil Company Yukos During Its Assault By the Kremlin. According to Senate filings, Black represented Yukos Oil Company in throughout 2004, during the period in which Yukos was facing takeover by the Kremlin after being hit by a multibillionaire back-tax bill. While Black ceased representing Yukos after the end of 2004, in February 2008, Black's firm BKSH registered to lobby for Yukos subsidiary Yukos International BV UK [Senate Office of Public Records; Business Week Online, 7/19/04, http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_29/b3892098_mz054.htm]
McCain's Hand-Picked RNC Chairman Lobbied for Offshore Drilling. For six years, Frank Donatelli - whom McCain appointed as Deputy Chairman of the RNC - lobbied on behalf of energy company Dominion Resources, earning his firm $380,000. According to lobbying disclosure, Donatelli lobbied on offshore drilling legislation, pipeline safety, energy reform legislation, and Yucca Mountain nuclear storage. Additionally, Donatelli also lobbied on issues regarding IRC (Internal Revenue Code) Section 29, which - having been "established by Congress through the Crude Oil Windfall Profit Tax Act of 1980" - provides for a tax credit "for producing fuel from a nonconventional source." [IRS Bulletin, 4/25/05; Donatelli/McGuireWoods Disclosures, Senate Office of Public Records]
Oil and Gas Industry Donors Reward Mccain
McCain Has Raised More Than $2.1 Million From The Oil and Gas Industry. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, John McCain received $1,039,768 in contributions from the oil and gas industry between January 2007 and May 2008 - a figure which dwarfs any other presidential candidates' oil industry money. In addition, the Washington Post reported that "campaign contributions from oil industry executives to Sen. John McCain rose dramatically in the last half of June, after the senator fromArizona made a high-profile split with environmentalists and reversed his opposition to the federal ban on offshore drilling." According to the Post's analysis, oil and gas industry executives and employees contributed $1.1 million to McCain and the Republican National Committee's Victory Fund in June - three-quarters of which were donated after McCain's June 16th announcement that he supported ending the moratorium on offshore drilling. These contributions, when combined with the $1.03 million raised by McCain prior to the month of June, indicated that he has raised more than $2.1 million from the oil and gas industry. [Center for Responsive Politics website, "Selected Industry Totals to Candidates," accessed 7/31/08; Washington Post, 7/27/08; "Oil Flow," WashingtonPost.com graphic, accessed 8/3/08]
Hess Executives and Family Members Donated a Total of $265,500 to the McCain Campaign on One Day. As reported by Talking Points Memo, drawing from analysis by Campaign Money Watch, "Ten senior Hess Corporation executives and/or members of the Hess family each gave $28,500 to the joint RNC-McCain fundraising committee, just days after McCain reversed himself to favor offshore drilling, according to Federal Election Commission reports. Nine of these contributions, seven from Hess executives and two from members of the Hess family, came on the same day, June 24th, the records show." [Talking Points Memo, 8/4/08]
A Hess Office Manager and Her Husband, an Amtrak Foreman, Donated $57,000. As reported by Talking Points Memo, drawing from analysis by Campaign Money Watch, "The FEC filings show that Alice Rocchio, who's identified as a Hess office manager, and her husband, Pasquale Rocchio, who's described as an Amtrak "track foreman," each separately donated $28,500 to the RNC-McCain fund, which is called McCain Victory 2008. They gave the money on June 24th, the same day that the ten Hess execs and family members each shelled out the same amount. So the Rocchios, who live in Flushing, Queens, donated a total of $57,000 to McCain's efforts." [Talking Points Memo, 8/4/08]
McCain Refuses to Crack Down on Profits Made by Oil Companies
McCain's Tax Plan Would Save Largest American Oil Companies Nearly $4 Billion. According to the Center for American Progress, "The centerpiece of Sen. McCain's plan to stimulate the economy - actually, the whole plan - is large tax cuts for corporations. It would deliver $3.8 billion in tax cuts to the five largest American oil companies, according to an analysis released today by the Center for American Progress Action Fund." According to the Center for American Progress' Analysis, Exxon/Mobil would save as much as $1.2 Billion under McCain's corporate tax cut. [Work Room, http://Thinkprogress.org, 3/27/2008]
McCain Opposes Windfall Profits Tax to Help American Families
McCain Voted Against Imposing a 50 Percent Excise Tax on Oil Company Windfall Profits. John McCain voted against an amendment to the 2005 Energy Policy Act to impose a 50 percent excise tax on windfall profits earned by major integrated U.S. oil companies on sale or constructive sale of taxable crude oil derived from existing wells during tax year. The amendment defined "windfall profits" as amount that a barrel of taxable crude oil sold or constructively sold exceeds $40 per barrel, adjusted annually for inflation and also provided for a reduction in the tax for exploration and development costs, investme